by Melanie Rawn
“Sleep well?” Sioned asked.
“That’s not funny,” he muttered.
She arched a brow, then went to push the tapestry curtains back from the windows. Sunlight lanced into Pol’s eyes. “Fiend.”
“But you did sleep, and didn’t dream.”
So she was in on Tobin’s little conspiracy, too. “Where’s Meath?”
“Up at dawn, and quietly enough not to wake you.” She smiled, enjoying his look of disbelief. “He’s got a hollow leg and an iron head—or is it the other way around? Though he did say something about his tongue feeling as if last night’s wine had stayed in his mouth and died there.”
“Then there’s justice after all.”
She started for the door. “I’ll call your squires in to help you. You’ll feel better once you’ve sweated out the wine in a hot bath.”
“Is that what you do every morning to sober up?”
Sioned turned, and the look she gave him made him wish he’d sliced his tongue out with his own sword.
“No,” she said with terrible calm. “What I do is remember the sight of your father’s dead eyes.”
The door slammed shut behind her.
Chapter Fifteen
Pol stayed in the bathtub a long time, needing the refuge. If anyone else spoke to him before his headache eased, he’d reach for the nearest blunt instrument—hardly in keeping with his new role as wise and even-tempered High Prince. But gradually the water soothed him, and he was able to think past the vicious pounding in his skull.
At Dragon’s Rest he’d come to appreciate water in ways different from his Desert childhood. Here, it was the feel of it in a bath, the sweet coolness of it on lips and tongue, the fleeting scent of it in the dry air. But he had learned water’s sounds at Dragon’s Rest. Drumming rain, rushing river, lapping waves on the lakeshore—all the soothing music that the Desert never heard.
He missed listening to water. Immersed to the chin in the bath, he closed his eyes and dreamed of home.
Or tried to. He had trouble imagining it, even though he had planned every stone and window and pathway. So much lay between him and the last time he’d seen home. The whole world had changed. Nothing would ever be as it was. Not even Dragon’s Rest.
Foolish to think that way. It had always been understood that eventually the palace would become the center of the princedoms, and not just at Rialla time. Those who had once journeyed to Stronghold to gain the ear of the High Prince would instead come to Dragon’s Rest.
But not so soon. Not like this. Goddess, not like this.
A few days ago he would have wrapped himself in rage and ridden out to kill someone. But the anger was feeble today, and he resented Tobin for stealing it from him. He needed it. Fury was preferable to this deadening despair.
Slowly a single comfort came to him in the silence. Meiglan. I’ll go find Meggie. At least when I’m with her, I can just be myself. I won’t have to fight so hard. I won’t have to go out and kill someone.
As he dressed, he deliberately envisioned a quiet day at her side. Sunlight gleaming in her hair as they sat together by a window, he with a book and she with her needlework . . . no. For all its sweetly familiar domesticity, that image felt wrong to him now. Since Stronghold he had hardly ever seen her without a sewing basket and garments to hand. Ruala had provided clothes for them all, but nothing really fit. Meiglan had been busy.
He shifted the mental picture to include a lute for Meiglan instead. But the instrument and even the book he saw himself with would also be borrowed. The toys his children played with, the food they ate, the beds they slept in—it was intolerable. He was the richest man in all the princedoms, but his every possession was at Dragon’s Rest.
Everything except what really mattered. His wife, his daughters. Power, and the rings that betokened it.
And one of those rings was an emerald-circled topaz, as borrowed as his sword, as his title of princely power.
Tobin was wrong. He was perfectly capable of lacerating his soul himself. He didn’t need Sionell to do it for him—although he suspected she would make a truly fine job of it.
Well, she had a right to. He ought to have known that Birioc would enlist Vellanti help in the north. He ought to have kept watch on the Sunrise Water and seen the ships well in advance.
That brought him up short. Why had no one looked? Usually faradh’im kept watch whenever there was light, reporting back and forth to each other at various castles and manors. They warned of everything from threatening storms and potential flash floods to rockslides and scavenging wolf packs. In this season of war, they ought to be watching and warning on whatever light they could weave.
He’d have to talk with Andry about that. When the Sunrunners no longer fulfilled their primary function of communication, Tiglath happened. It was Andry’s responsibility to enforce discipline among the court Sunrunners. Maarken and Hollis and Meath and all the rest of them here had other duties; they couldn’t be expected—
Pol shook his head. Excuses. Easier to blame Andry than to admit the failure was his own.
Still, he thought as he dressed, events had broken the usual luminous chain of faradhi communication. It must be reforged. Andry was the one who would have to do it—when and if he could be found.
Damn him, how could he have disappeared so thoroughly? Someone would have to go looking for him—Maarken or Hollis, as he was still speaking to them so far as Pol knew. The Lord of Goddess Keep must order the Sunrunners to greater vigilance. The High Prince couldn’t (although imagining his cousin’s reaction if he tried it afforded a certain satisfaction).
Clean, clad, and more or less clear-headed, Pol started downstairs to do something about the Sunrunner problem. The castle was empty and gratingly silent. When he reached the main doors and looked out into the courtyard, he discovered why.
• • •
Meiglan had dressed very carefully that morning. She borrowed an emerald silk gown from Ruala and a pair of heavy silver earrings that dripped amethysts nearly to her shoulders. Her hair was pinned atop her head to give her a little more height; heeled shoes lent a little more. Cosmetics subtly emphasized her eyes and lips. Her mirror had confirmed what her startled daughters had told her: that she was the perfect image of a High Princess. Not for nothing had she observed Rohan over the years, on those occasions when he transformed himself from plainly dressed scholar to powerful High Prince.
She stood on the top step of the gatehouse, with Riyan, Maarken, and Chay just below her. Their presence lent her added authority—not that she required it today. The people of five castles had assembled silently in the courtyard at her summons, not theirs; all eyes were on her. The High Princess. It was terrifying and exciting and her stomach was in knots. But when the three captive lords of Cunaxa—Miyon’s sons, her half-brothers—were brought before her in chains, she forgot her nervousness and said what she knew she must.
“These men are traitors,” she began in a firm, carrying voice. “They have taken up arms against us, they have allied themselves with the Merida, they have summoned the Vellant’im to their aid—for all it gained them against the courage of the good people of Tiglath and—and our beloved Lord Tallain.” Her voice faltered at mention of him, but she managed not to look up at the window of the chamber where Sionell was, she hoped, still sleeping.
Reminding herself once again who she was, she went on, “They have done irreparable injury, causing such grief that no Hell would be punishment enough. I won’t make one for them, as my lord did with those who followed them. I don’t know how to make them suffer enough for what they have done.”
She gestured. Kazander came forward into the space between the prisoners and the steps, and from a leather satchel produced Birioc’s head. Zanyr, Duroth, and Ezanto had not known of their brother’s death; one of them turned his face away, one closed his eyes briefly, and one cried out.
“Silence!” Chay growled.
The chains rattled softly as the men tremb
led.
Meiglan addressed the crowd once more. “That man was kin to me in blood. So are the three men you see here today. I ask your pardon for it.”
“Hardly your fault,” Chay observed.
“None can blame you, gentle Lady,” Kazander told her.
“Thank you, my lords. I—”
Suddenly one of her father’s sons spat at her feet. She held herself from a flinch. Kazander growled low in his throat, like a dragon.
“Kill us,” her half-brother invited. “But the Vellant’im came to our call at Tiglath. The High Warlord himself will come from Stronghold to avenge us.”
“He will have to get past the High Prince first,” Meiglan said flatly. “I’m sorry that I’m not strong enough to kill you myself. I wanted to. But the Lord of Feruche, the Battle Commander, and the korrus of the Isulk’im have claimed the privilege.” She raised her voice. “I am the High Princess, and I order these traitors executed!”
With that, Maarken and Riyan and Kazander unsheathed their swords. Death was immediate: simultaneous thrusts through the heart. Meiglan watched it done, still as a stone even when blood splashed her skirts.
“For Jahnavi,” Riyan said, dark eyes glinting like Fire in the night.
“For Tallain,” Maarken added fiercely.
“For their wives and daughters and sons,” Kazander finished.
Meiglan descended the steps delicately, lifting the hem of her gown above the blood-soaked cobbles. A path was made for her through the grimly approving crowd. Her even strides checked only once—when she saw her husband standing in the doorway of the keep.
Willing herself to calm, she mounted the stairs and paused before him. “I hope you think this rightly done, my lord,” she murmured. “I only knew that I was the one who must do it.”
Pol looked stricken. Meiglan touched his arm and saw her fingers tremble. She took her hand away.
“Meggie—”
“Pol, I had to!”
“I know,” he whispered. Then he moved past her into the sunlight and called out, “Kazander!”
Meiglan turned. The Isulki approached Pol, still holding Birioc’s head in his left hand. “My prince?”
“This High Warlord deserves a little token of our esteem. Wrap that up and put a ribbon on it, and have it delivered to him.”
Kazander grinned. “At once, most high and noble prince!”
Pol nodded, and returned to Meiglan’s side. High Prince and High Princess, she told herself—until she saw his eyes.
“Pol, please,” she began. “You must understand—”
“I do. That’s the Hell of it.”
• • •
Andry departed Swalekeep having no more than glimpsed Ostvel within the castle gardens. He didn’t trust himself to speak to the man, for what he would have said was, You idiot! How dare you send her where you know Chiana will be?
Wearing the face he’d shown the innkeeper, Andry rode past the low castle walls and beyond them saw the Lord of Castle Crag. Ostvel walked amid the bare rose trees, a scribbling servant tagging behind him to record his every word. Andry watched for a few moments, admiration mingling with anger. Only Ostvel could turn so assiduously to making well-fed order of a potentially chaotic famine. How he could do this while Alasen headed straight into danger was beyond Andry’s understanding.
Well, he wished him luck with the work. Feeding Swalekeep and all its war-augmented population for the rest of the winter would be a task and a half. The font of information who masqueraded as an innkeeper had told Andry that the food warehouses had been fouled by mysterious means popularly attributed to the Vellant’im. It was a major reason why so many had gone out to fight the enemy. Andry suspected another hand in it, though. If Tilal had lost, the Vellant’im could have resupplied themselves with those food stores. He wondered if Ostvel had looked into it yet.
The innkeeper had also talked this morning about plans to bring grain and other necessities from untouched, empty Waes. Andry supposed it was workable, but he didn’t envy the caravan of wagons and packhorses the coming weather. The last half of winter was always the worst.
For himself, he intended to find some nice, remote place for Chiana to spend it in. But first he had to find her.
That she would find no welcome at Dragon’s Rest was a given. He was determined she wouldn’t get within shouting distance of the place—partly because she wanted it so much, mostly because Alasen would be there.
He left Swalekeep by the eastern gate, unremarked by anyone but the guard, and turned north. A measure farther on, the road curved around an orchard of nut trees that screened the way from sight of the city. Andry urged his horse to a fast trot—all the speed he dared on the half-frozen mud—and asked himself yet again why he didn’t just catch up to Alasen and persuade her back to Swalekeep. She was only a day ahead of him; a rider alone was always swifter than many in a group; surely she would listen to him.
Almost surely, she would not.
No, he would seek Chiana and Rinhoel instead. Driven out of Swalekeep with only the castle guard for an army, they were dangerous now because they had nothing to lose. If they did manage to get into Dragon’s Rest, Goddess alone knew what they and Miyon of Cunaxa might concoct.
With Alasen there, in easy reach.
He slowed at the orchard and was about to dismount and tether his horse to a fence when he heard voices deep in the trees. So Ostvel had sent people out to tend neglected crops, had he? Andry approved, though it meant he must ride on until he found a sheltered spot where he could ride the sunlight unobserved.
Farther down the road he saw men and plow-elk struggling through brittle fields that should have been turned half a season ago. The labor would be backbreaking, but at least the land would be ready for spring planting. Andry returned their calls of greeting with a wave of his hand. A tidy place, Meadowlord, with good people—a land that deserved better rule than Chiana’s. It had survived her, as it had the wars of many princedoms fought here on rich soil unlucky enough to be a convenient battleground. The land always survived.
Toward midmorning Andry spotted an abandoned farmhouse just off the main road. As good a place as any to find cover—and comfort, on the little wooden bench just outside. But with his first glance through the open door, he stopped cold. Despite the difference in location and circumstance, he was forcibly reminded of the old woman’s cottage in the Veresch.
There, he had found that strange mirror and an unsent letter revealing what Pol was. Both items were now gone—the mirror shattered when it showed him the blankness that meant death when he spoke Brenlis’ name, the letter burned long since. He hadn’t dared take it back to Goddess Keep, for no matter how well guarded, someone might have found it and learned what he had learned.
Here, in a simple dwelling in Meadowlord, he found no mirror, no letter. But the herbs hanging from the rafters spread the same fragrance, and the homey details of cookpots and crockery and wood near the empty hearth were the same. Andry shook off memory and helped himself to hard cheese and stale bread from the larder, washed it down with swigs from his wineskin, and relaxed for a few moments before going back outside.
The sky had cleared nicely, as if preparing for him. He thanked the Goddess and the Father of Storms, then settled comfortably on a wooden bench in the sunshine and wove light in a search for two women. One was dangerous because she was desperate. The other was dangerous because, despite all the years and the changes—despite even Brenlis, whose name would always ache in his chest—in spite of it all, he still loved her.
• • •
“But we can’t send them home in this weather,” Torien protested.
“It can’t be much worse traveling in the rain than having to bail out a tent twenty times a day,” Jolan countered. “They’re not our people, Torien—and they’re eating us down to dregs and parings.”
Valeda nodded agreement, gesturing around the refectory at the tables being set for the midday meal. “How long do you think
we can continue to fill our plates and theirs, too? We have our own farmers and herders to think of. We can’t support so many if this war goes on.”
“Waes is secure enough from attack,” Jolan said with an air of finishing an argument with an irrefutable fact. “The Vellant’im are withdrawing from the rivers. People can return to their homes without fear. And they’d best do so as soon as possible.”
Torien regarded his wife with a scowl. “We have enough. We can’t turn them away—because you’re wrong. They are our people, Jolan.”
The two women exchanged glances. Valeda shrugged and said, “With Andry gone, you’ve had to take over his duties. You haven’t been tending the accounts the way you usually do. But Jolan and I have been keeping track. At the current rate, we won’t have enough to last until spring.”
“Even then,” Jolan added, “even if the war ends and trade resumes, it takes time to transport goods. What will we eat until then? And this is assuming the war does end. There’s no certainty it will. I know you don’t like it, but there it is. We can’t afford these people anymore.”
“You’re not listening to me!” he exclaimed, pacing a few steps from them and then whirling around. “We can’t turn them away, and not just because it’s wrong. They were exiled from their home by princes—or denied refuge by other princes. We took them in. What would be said of us if we exiled them, too? The Goddess does not turn her back on those in need.”
“But there’s no reason for them to stay!” Valeda nearly took him by the shoulders to shake him. “Waes isn’t in danger! At least send those people back where they belong—or pretty soon we’ll be the ones in need!”
“The Goddess will provide for all of us,” Torien replied.
She waited for Jolan to speak in her support. But the other woman was looking thoughtful and Valeda realized she’d have to say it herself. “What she can provide are ships to carry them home. If you’re so worried that their feet will get wet, send to Arlis’ Sunrunner at New Raetia. Not all the Kierstian ships went to Einar. Two or three would do to carry these people back to Waes.”